TY - JOUR

T1 - Self-regulatory thought across time and domains

AU - Sevincer, A. Timur

AU - Feller, Elisabeth

AU - Wallot, Sebastian

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 American Psychological Association. All Rights Reserved.

PY - 2024/12/1

Y1 - 2024/12/1

N2 - People think differently about their personal wishes, and the way they think about their wishes impacts their success in fulfilling the wishes. Fantasy realization theory (Oettingen, 2000) distinguishes between four modes of thought people use when thinking about important personal wishes: mental contrasting, indulging, dwelling, and reverse contrasting. Research has focused on investigating the effects of these four modes on goal pursuit or on examining the spontaneous use of the modes about a single wish at one time point. Here, we go beyond this research by investigating the spontaneous use of the modes across wishes from multiple domains (Study 1) and across time (Study 2). In Study 1, participants wrote about three wishes form different domains (interpersonal, health, and possible self ) at one time point online. In Study 2, we used ecological momentary assessment to investigate the use of the modes across 1 week in everyday life. Participants were beeped on their smartphone randomly 3 times a day and asked to write down their thoughts about an important personal wish. We measured participants’ modes of thought using the content-analytic method by Sevincer and Oettingen (2013a). Across studies the use of indulging was more consistent and less fluctuating over time than the use of mental contrasting, dwelling, and reverse contrasting. Our findings suggest that that there are individual differences in the degree to which people habitually use each of the modes of thought, in particular indulging.

AB - People think differently about their personal wishes, and the way they think about their wishes impacts their success in fulfilling the wishes. Fantasy realization theory (Oettingen, 2000) distinguishes between four modes of thought people use when thinking about important personal wishes: mental contrasting, indulging, dwelling, and reverse contrasting. Research has focused on investigating the effects of these four modes on goal pursuit or on examining the spontaneous use of the modes about a single wish at one time point. Here, we go beyond this research by investigating the spontaneous use of the modes across wishes from multiple domains (Study 1) and across time (Study 2). In Study 1, participants wrote about three wishes form different domains (interpersonal, health, and possible self ) at one time point online. In Study 2, we used ecological momentary assessment to investigate the use of the modes across 1 week in everyday life. Participants were beeped on their smartphone randomly 3 times a day and asked to write down their thoughts about an important personal wish. We measured participants’ modes of thought using the content-analytic method by Sevincer and Oettingen (2013a). Across studies the use of indulging was more consistent and less fluctuating over time than the use of mental contrasting, dwelling, and reverse contrasting. Our findings suggest that that there are individual differences in the degree to which people habitually use each of the modes of thought, in particular indulging.

KW - ecological momentary assessment

KW - habit

KW - mental contrasting

KW - self-regulation

KW - spontaneous thought

KW - Psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85197469605&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1037/mot0000345

DO - 10.1037/mot0000345

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85197469605

VL - 10

SP - 277

EP - 289

JO - Motivation Science

JF - Motivation Science

SN - 2333-8113

IS - 4

ER -